Wednesday, May 12, 2004
On Abu Gharib
First off, I should state for the record that the abuses at Abu Gharib are inexcusable. Those responsible should be tried and punished without delay.
That said, punishing the abusers and those who turned a blind eye to the abuse are a different creature than opportunistic releasing of the hounds, hoping to bring down Secretary Rumsfeld (and, by proxy, President Bush). The abuse was under investigation within the military long before the media frenzy and even before the ICRC complaints. Plenty of people have made various points about how punishing those criminally responsible is different from removing Rummy; it would take too long to list the reasons or link to all the material.
In any case, Jonah Goldberg writes a gem on how the media has reacted to Abu Gharib:Now we're hearing demands that all of the photos collected by the Pentagon be released immediately. Never mind that if the U.S. government releases pictures of POWs being humiliated we'll be violating the Geneva Convention &em; again.Zing.
The media frenzy is disgusting, in essence exploiting the abuse. How great it must be to be in today's media, to be able to both profit from and condemn others' crime at the same time.
But so that nobody can say I'm apologizing for anyone, I want to end this post by again condemning the abuse at Abu Gharib: those responsible are animals and they must be punished.
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